As They Were
by bethemoon
Summary: Set shortly after LWW. Mr. Pevensie comes home on leave and notices. Four intertwined short pieces, with a possibility of more later. All 6 Pevensies, no pairings, general. A slight focus on Edmund and Peter.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: As They Were  
**Fandom**: Soon after LWW  
**Rating**: G  
**Character(s)**: All Pevensies (including parents), with some emphasis on Ed and Pete.  
**Disclaimer**: Clive Staples Lewis' world, not mine.  
**Notes**: This is more a series of four tiny fics that go together, about Mr. Pevensie noticing. I have quite a few other ideas in my head for other stories set in the same time, and I may or may not add them as further chapters to this story.

Mr. Pevensie hadn't been home above five hours when he started noticing.

It started with the horns, mostly. The family had eaten dinner and were in the living room listening to the wireless (set to the classical music station) and talking, catching up on news now that Mr. Pevensie was home on sick leave (the illness had spread to his lungs, and there was no way he'd be fit for more than light work for at least four months, the doctors said). The music paused, and the announcer gave the name of the next piece, no one in the crowded room really listening, and then the music began, horns ringing clear. There was a motion opposite him, as Peter's head came up, a sudden fierce clearness in his eyes, the set of his jaw and mouth determined.

The horns continued their high, clear music, and Mr. Pevensie glanced around the room, taking in his children's faces. Edmund's eyes held the same clearness as Peter's, and he was smiling at nothing. He looked years older in a moment (like a king, Mr. Pevensie's subconscious said, but the thought never reached his mind). Susan's lips parted for a moment as she drew in a deep breath, flattening her hands on her lap as if consciously restraining them. Lucy had that look on her face, the one reserved for magic and fairies and elves in corners, as she stirred restless in her chair.

Then the horns ended the introduction and the orchestra came in. As one, the children let out a breath they weren't aware they'd been holding, and Peter's head drooped. Edmund, curled up in the corner of the sofa, was suddenly a boy again.

_Odd_, Mr. Pevensie thought.

------------------

"... what, by sheer force?" Pete was saying, only it didn't really sound like Pete. Mr. Pevensie paused, his hand on the doorknob.

"Well, he thinks he can do it, at least," Edmund argued, and his voice too had a deeper, almost manly tone to it. (Mr. Pevensie's subconscious stirred again, but Mr. Pevensie batted away the thought as ridiculous.) "And that's half the battle right there."

"Sure, if you can give that assurance to the troops. But they don't lead like we did, Ed. They lead from little bunkers in the back, staying safe."

"And they call themselves generals," Ed said scornfully. "I bet they'd have no idea what to do if asked to go up against the Northern Giants. Now that was a battle for the ages." Peter laughed, and Mr. Pevensie realized that it was the first time he'd heard Peter laugh in the two days he'd been home. He frowned and thought back. Edmund hadn't laughed either, he realized, and he had always been the merrier of the two. And Susan too, and Lucy even, were more serious than he remembered them. He wondered for a moment, and then decided it was probably just the war.

He pushed open the door, and they both looked up, almost warily, the smiles on their faces fading. Peter's shoulders tensed, his forehead frowning, and Edmund's eyes clouded again as he hunched over the map on the table. The remarks Mr. Pevensie had planned, cheery and common, faded, and he walked through to the door to the kitchen with nothing more than a smile to them. He listened from the kitchen for them to start talking again, but they didn't.

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It was a week later that Mr. Pevensie began to wonder what Edmund kept doing in the evenings, hunched over a piece of paper with a pencil or pen in his hands. Finally he moved over and started looking through the stack of papers beside Edmund. He could see Edmund stiffen beside him.

They were drawings, he realized after a moment, pen and ink sketches for the most part of places he'd never seen and strange fantastical creatures. They were all done with a meticulous eye for detail that astonished Mr. Pevensie, who had always considered his son a bit of a rapscallion, to tell the truth.

"Edmund, where is this?" he said finally, holding one of the drawings up. It was one of the best, done with such detail and attention that if color were added, it would be alive, of a castle resting beside the sea. It was one of the few labeled ones, a small, neat 'Cair Paravel' written down in the bottom right corner. The room went completely still in a moment, as the other three children stopped what they were doing. Susan went pale, Lucy's eyes looked about to fill with tears, and Peter looked somewhere between furious and reverent, if such a combination were possible.

"Just somewhere I remember," Edmund said softly, and that kingly tone was back in his voice again. He looked at the picture longingly, and then stood up and took it gently from his father's hands, putting it back on the other drawings and taking them too. "Beautiful, isn't it?" he said softly, and then opened a drawer and placed the drawings away, shutting it firmly.

Somewhere behind him came a rustle of skirts as Susan left the room, and Edmund followed her out, giving a look to Peter that stopped him halfway as he began to rise from his chair.

----------------------

"Susan, I'm sorry," Edmund said. "I didn't mean for you others to see those. They were just something I did... to keep the memory fresh, you know?"

Susan nodded, her face stern as she kept the tears back.

"It's just..." she said softly. "I could almost see the lights, and taste the cider and wine from that last ball we held. You remember it, right?"

"Yes," Edmund said. "I remember." The dryads came and made petal showers, laughing as they fell, and Mr. Tumnus danced with Lucy, and there was only a half hour to dawn when everyone left, all silver and shining in the twilight, and we waved them all away and then went to bed. And the next afternoon we left to hunt the stag, and everything changed.

A moment later, he realized Susan had been thinking the same thoughts.

"The dryads looked so beautiful in the twilight," she said softly.


	2. Chapter 2

Even after only a few short hours together, dinner and some time in the family room, Mr. Pevensie knew his children had changed. His wife confirmed it when he brought up their reactions to the horns.

"I didn't want to worry you," she explained, her face tight and upset, "But they've been so different since they got back from the country."

"In a good way or a bad way?" Mr. Pevensie asked, worry coloring his voice. If he should die and she was left alone with them again… (it was his secret, the doctor's words, and he meant never to let them know, not while there was still a chance for a happy ending).

"Both," Helen said as she slid under the covers. "Edmund's so much better now. He'd gotten quite unmanageable, and he and Peter were always at each other's throats. But they're very close now, and I don't have complaints from his school about bullying anymore."

"But?" Mr. Pevensie prompted, feeling her reluctance to worry him.

"Every single one of their teachers has told me they're model students, well behaved and good, but they never volunteer any answers or seem as if they're really engaged in what's going on. And then…" she hesitated again. "Then there's the nightmares," she finished. "Edmund never goes more than two nights without one, and Peter's almost as bad. When they first came back, it wasn't as often, but it's gotten worse and worse."

"This war is awful," Mr. Pevensie said sympathetically, and then he didn't ask any more questions.

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He woke later that night to Edmund's screams, and bolted out of bed and towards his room. For a moment he was back in battle, running towards death and bloodshed because there was nowhere else to go and you could hear your mate screaming and you had to _make it stop make it stop make it __**stop**_, and then he wrenched open Edmund's door and saw his sons.

Peter was holding Edmund, was whispering fiercely, his words like fire lighting the darkness as Edmund clung to Peter desperately.

"It's all right, Ed, I'm here. I'm here, and she won't ever get you, not ever. Let the world fall to ruin, but she won't get you." Edmund was sobbing, his hands clenching and unclenching on Peter's shirt almost mechanically.

"I tried so hard, Pete, _so hard_, and she won," Edmund said, his voice broken. "I can still see her eyes in the dark, and Aslan's face is fading already."

"She's dead and gone now, it's all right Ed," Pete whispered. "Now shhh. Sleep. You'll wake mum again." Mr. Pevensie stepped slowly out the door and closed it behind him, listening until Edmund's sobs changed to deep breaths and he heard Pete's sheets rustle as the older boy returned to bed.

Slowly, Mr. Pevensie walked down the stairs, unable to keep back the doubt that filled his mind. What was wrong? What memories could Edmund possibly know that would prompt that fear and anguish in his voice? And who was 'her'? He'd like to break her nose if his son's nightmares were her fault.

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It was Peter's voice that awoke him next. Mr. Pevensie was drowning in the grief and loss that filled it, suffocating in terror, and then he was opening the door again to find Edmund holding Peter, who was drawing in deep shuddering breaths.

"I'm so sorry, Ed, so sorry," Pete whispered, grief in every tone of his voice. "I thought I'd get there in time, I thought your wing would hold longer, I thought you were safe. I should have thought, should have remembered, should have _known_-"

"It was my job to know, remember Pete?" Edmund interrupted, his voice firm and calm, but Mr. Pevensie could see the rigid lines written across his face as he held Peter, could see the remembered pain in every line of Edmund's body. "I'm the Spymaster, it was nobody's fault but mine. You couldn't have known that the dwarves would break rank, they'd never done that before. And I didn't die, remember? Lucy was there, it was all right."

"So much blood," Peter said, his laugh catching and turning into a sob. "I meant to protect you always, and I couldn't. But I tried, Ed, I really did." Edmund laughed, and smoothed Peter's hair with his hand as he pulled the rumpled covers up about the older boy.

"I was King too, Pete. The battle was my place as much as yours."

"I know," Peter said, and his eyes fluttered shut. "And we're alive. So it's… it's all right." It sounded as though he were repeating something he had been told hundreds of times but never really believed. Edmund nodded, and Mr. Pevensie turned his eyes away and left again, feeling guilty, as though he had intruded on something supremely private.

--------------

Helen was awake and waiting when he got back to bed the second time.

"Do the girls ever have nightmares?" he asked.

"Susan had one twice, and Lucy will cry out in her sleep every so often, but it's never so bad as the boys," Helen said. Mr. Pevensie hesitated.

"The way they were talking," he said after a moment. "It was all death and war, but where have they ever seen that? They weren't even in London for the Blitz, and the way they talked… it was like they'd walked with death." He paused, his arms reaching out in the darkness to hold Helen close to him. "Their eyes," he said. "They were soldier's eyes." (King's eyes, something in the very back of his brain said, but like the others, it never reached his thoughts.)

**A/N**: I'd just like to mention that this isn't meant as a continuing story- it's meant as a series of fics centered around the same idea and general time (when Mr. Pevensie comes back from the war on a sick leave for a few months). I'm not sure what all will end up happening, but it doesn't really have a plot, so...

**..** - Thanks! I'm glad you liked it.

**BundiBird **- That was the first scene that came to me, and I tried to make the reactions fit the person. Thanks!

**Coralyne **- It's something that's always intrigued me, because they would have been so different after they came back. Thank you.

**bookwurm23 **- It's one of my favorite subjects too (can you tell?). Glad you like it! Thanks.

**LunaNigra **- It'll be 'continued' in that any fics I write that fit it will be added as new chapters to this. XD

**SpangleyPony **- I don't know where it's going myself. XD Thank you!


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